proach them," she told me. "I learned so much about Washington and national politics and the legislative process during the eight years of my husband's two terms. I made a lot of mistakes. I learned from those mistakes. At least, I hope I did." Then she steered the conversa- tion back to the complexities of her for- mer role. "I don't know that anything can prepare you for ending up in the Whi te House," she said. "It is just so many light-years apart from any other . " experIence. The ill-defined demands of the First Lady's office are a recurring theme in "Living Histo " "I was navigating un- charted terrain-and through my own inexperience, I contributed to some of the conflicting perceptions about me," Clinton writes at one point. "I was still learning the ropes and still discovering what it meant to be America's First Lad)T," she observes at another. While it is probably true that every First Lady has to tinker with the role, Clinton was the first to imagine that it fell to the President's wife to reinvent the Ameri- can health-care system. What is missing from her account is, not coincidentall)T, what is left out of her account of the Senate race-any mention of her own ambition. The closest Chnton comes to ac- knowledging what was really at issue is some broad generalities about gender roles. "We were living in an era in which some people still felt deep ambivalence about women in positions of public leadership and power," she writes. Even in these se]f-abstracted terms, though, she doesn't carry the argument nearly as far as she collid. Surely it is unfair that the same ambitions that are admired in a man are in a woman considered repel- lent. But to complain about this dou- ble standard would be to acknowledge precisely what Clinton has worked so hard-and, as the Senate seat she now occupies demonstrates, so success:fiilly- to repress. The second time I interviewed Clin- ton, I decided to try to see if I could push beyond her vague statements about women in power. First, I asked her if she would give different advice to a young woman entering politics from what she wollid give to a young man. "There are lots of little inconsequential but apparendy important matters, like ......,. ... ,.... ._._. .:.. .::.:. .:." .-..-:'>> "....w....."."'.. .... .. -:- ,."., <,...0,. ";:..':::':'. "::'..::<"::::.:.'.:::::':': .,c .,, :... '.;.. ' : _ :__ [ jg'if iMI i.t'. / J iÑJt@j ! l ': ' =-- =-- ,., o. :.' ... --- ---- :::: :..-- .-s.,',tlX:t,.o t .g!tt : ;þfj, !:J; t :it*) . '''?'Wt\Vt:oi[.', ; ;;N 1""i{ o. 4* \vt).!i1: "'ø: tÞio - . '. ----:=--- -=====- _a._.....;,.,..?i;...:-:-.-._:-:-....._ ..........___ ., ,;:.:i \'l'/:: $\'f1i1;;ì! i <>0 .O(Q) 9 'f@@ bAíf . hair style and wardrobe and the height of one's heels on marble floors, that you have to be aware of:" she said. Would she advise Chelsea to go into politics? "I would never talk about what I advise my daughter to do." Was she treated differently in the Senate because she is a woman? "I really have been impressed at how collegial the atmosphere is," she replied. Shortly before the interview, I spoke to Dwight Jewson, a marketing consul- tant who had been hired by Clinton's Senate campaign to investigate why she was polling so poorly among certain groups-particularly suburban women- that she needed to win. "When you're a strong, powerful woman, you're seen as one of two types of person," J ewson told me. "You're either our mother, because our mothers are strong powerful women we love, or you're a manipulative, oppor- tunistic bitch." I asked Clinton what she thought of Jews on's assessment. She paused for a split second. "I think we're getting beyond that," she said. "I'm sure there are some people, Just as there are people who have never accepted the civil-nghts revolution and the equality of all kinds of human beings, who live with and act on stereotypes, but I just don't see that as pervasive anymore." Finally, as we were pulling up at . the New York State Fair, I asked her whether she ever wished she wouldn t have to read another word about Hillary Clinton. She smiled. "That does cross my mind." E ver since entering the Senate, Clin- ton has hosted an annual invitation- only lunch at the State Fair. Her guests include community leaders and elected officials from central New York, along with an assortment of people who some- how fit in with the lunch's annual theme Last year's was agriculture, and the guests included several dairy farmers. This year's was the milit Clinton had a private meeting beforehand, so I went over to the lunch ahead of her. It was a steamy day, and many of the guests, es- pecially those in uniform, had arrived early to escape the heat on the fair- grounds. Rhèa Jezer, the former chair- man of the state's Sierra Club, was sit- ting with her husband, Daniel, a rabbi. "When my mother died, when I had a foot operation that got infected, Hillary called," Jezer told me. "She really cares. Yet the press says that she's cold. I don't understand that." J ezer introduced me to the Onondaga County executive, Nick Pirro, a Repub- lican, who apparendy had been invited out of a spirit of bipartisanship. He THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 13, 2003 73